Windows tagged news

Intel’s driver team has published a new graphics driver for all recent GPUs (Intel 6th, 7th and 8th Gen processors) on Windows 10. This driver version exposes Vulkan 1.1.82, and continues to support OpenGL 4.5, exposing the same OpenGL support as v4944 (245 OpenGL extensions). Direct download from Intel is here.

Valve released the Beta of a new and improved version of Steam Play to all Linux users. The Beta version includes a modified distribution of Wine, called Proton, to provide compatibility with Windows game titles. Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support. DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact. There are a lot of details in this announcement, be sure to read the entry over on the Steam Community website.

LunarG has released new Vulkan SDKs for Windows, Linux, and macOS based on the 1.1.77 header. Changes and additions to Vulkan SDK 1.1.77 include: Linux SDK is now packaged as a tar.gz file instead of a .run file; Many bug fixes, increased validation coverage and accuracy improvements, and feature additions and new extensions for this SDK release: VK_KHR_get_display_properties2 and
VK_KHR_draw_indirect_count.

GL-Z is an OpenGL and Vulkan information utility for Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi and Tinker Board. GL-Z 0.4.0, based on GeeXLab, has been released with the following new features: OpenGL memory usage for GeForce and Radeon GPUs on Windows and Linux; Vulkan API information for each Vulkan-capable device and more.

The LunarG Vulkan software development kit (SDK) provides the development and runtime components required to build, run, and debug Vulkan applications. Developers can download the LunarG Vulkan SDK from the LunarXchange website. This blog post will discuss security as it relates to the Vulkan Runtime and Loader on Windows OS.

At GDC 2017, in San Francisco during February, Khronos™ released several new Vulkan® extensions for cross-platform Virtual Reality rendering and multiple GPU access. This functionality has been initially released as KHX extensions to enable feedback from the developer community before being incorporated into final specifications. One key question that we have been asked since GDC is whether the Vulkan multi-GPU functionality is specifically tied to ship only on Windows 10.

Cloud Imperium Games developer Ali Brown indicated that Star Citizen will be dropping DirectX support in favor of Vulkan. Specifically, Brown mentioned that CIG had been developing on DX11, with an intent to support DX12. However, because Vulkan enables single-API support for older version of Windows (and Linux) without sacrificing performance and features, the plan now is to move away from DirectX completely.

NVIDIA graphics driver for Windows version 378.66 is now offering some OpenCL 2.0 support. From the release notes: "New features in OpenCL 2.0 are available in the driver for evaluation purposes only." Some known issues include: The current implementation is limited to 64-bit platforms only; OpenCL 2.0 allows kernels to be enqueued with global_work_size larger than the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU. The current implementation supports only combinations of global_work_size and local_work_size that are within the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU; For executing kernels (whether from the host or the device), OpenCL 2.0 supports non-uniform ND-ranges where global_work_size does not need to be divisible by the local_work_size. This capability is not yet supported in the NVIDIA driver, and therefore not supported for device side kernel enqueues.

Earlier this week, at the Microsoft Windows 10 Event in New York, Microsoft shared their vision around 3D for everyone. As part of achieving that vision Microsoft announced they are joining the 3D Formats working group at Khronos to collaborate on its GL Transmission Format (glTF).

NVIDIA is rolling out the world’s first production Vulkan drivers today as part of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OTA update to SHIELD Android TV. This makes SHIELD Android TV the first consumer platform with production installed Vulkan drivers – making it an ideal platform for Android developers to get easy access to this new-generation graphics API This continues NVIDIA’s rollout of Vulkan drivers across multiple platforms, including Windows 7-10, desktop and embedded Linux and now Android.

LunarG, Inc. announced the release of the first Vulkan Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows® and Linux operating systems. The SDK includes the resources developers need to get started creating the next generation of 3D graphics applications.